Read Online Rescuing Julia Twice by Tina Traster - Free Book Online Page B

teacher, but she’s taken time off to raise their child. Ricky talks a little about the tea company.
    During lunch, I notice a group of young women, maybe twenty-year-olds. They peel off heavy fur coats. Underneath they are wearing thin leggings with pencil skirts and baby-doll shirts. There are three of them, and they’re all tall and gorgeous with long, golden hair, exquisite paper-white complexions, and broad cheeks with slightly slanted eyes.
    Is this Julia in twenty years? I can picture her dark, slightly slanted eyes and her alabaster skin.
    Siberia is a crossroads of European and Asian cultures. Its very name conjures up images of prison camps and frozen death. Siberia equals banishment. It’s the place people never return from. Or go to, unless they are forced to.

    Novosibirsk, with 1.5 million people, is Siberia’s largest city. It has its own narrative, according to the few bits of information I had been able to scrounge on the Internet before we left. The city was founded in 1893 at the future site of a Trans-Siberian Railway bridge crossing the greatSiberian river Ob. Since 1925, it has been the center of heavy metallurgy and machine-tool manufacturing, of international trade conferences, and of mining and chemical manufacturing. The Ob River, one of the longest in the world, runs through the broad, wide city, flowing toward the Arctic. The river is so polluted with industrial waste and toxic oil it doesn’t entirely freeze in winter. There’s a world-class opera and ballet house here. In the 1950s, the Soviet government built Akademgorodok, a scientific research complex located on the city’s outskirts. Novosibirsk has fourteen research institutions and universities.

    Neal says he’s going to walk around and get some fresh air. Ricky gets us each another cup of black tea, and we linger a bit longer. “Wow, I don’t envy him,” I say. “Barbara probably blames him for coming here alone and not seeing that the baby is a problem.”
    â€œI don’t know,” he says, blowing on the steamy cup. “She seems a bit neurotic. I feel sorry for him.”
    â€œWhat would you do if I suddenly had a change of mind?”
    â€œC’mon,” he says. “Let’s go see what we can find to like about Novosibirsk.”
    It is cold, but the frigid air is rejuvenating. Our first stop is a store that sells maps. None of the maps are in English. We’ve been wanting desperately to have a map, because we constantly feel disoriented. We’re driven everywhere by Vladimir. We’re never allowed to take public transportation. Ricky says they drive us a different route from our housing digs to the orphanage every time just to keep us off our game.
    We duck into an Internet café. It is up one level and filled with grungy twenty-somethings. They scowl when they see us. The computer is slow. Our friend Jay has been staying at our apartment with our cat. He’s our only lifeline. His e-mails are peppered with adorable things Floopy has done. He reports on the cat’s eating and bathroom habits. He mentions how tense things are as President George W. Bush prepares to start a war in Iraq.
    I sign off with a heavy heart. What grief will a war in Iraq bring? Will New York be targeted again by terrorists? I have not been the same since 9/11. The horrific attack left me unable to feel unfettered and free in a city I’ve loved my whole life. I wasn’t at Ground Zero. I only knew people who knew people who died. But I was changed. I stopped riding the subway, I became claustrophobic in high-rises, and I didn’t like to be in places with crowds. I craved a little cabin in the woods we could escape to at the drop of a hat. As I reread Jay’s words about Bush waging war, I think maybe we should stay here in this frozen city at the end of the world.
    â€œYou OK?” Ricky asks.
    â€œThe neocons are marching to war,” I